Noida: Gautam Buddh Nagar and Ghaziabad had voted in the first phase of the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections 2022 and had a voter turnout of 56% and 55% respectively. And it was a happy outcome for BJP in these NCR areas.
Gautam Buddh Nagar: BJP MLAs from Noida, Dadri and Jewar emerge winners
BJP MLAs from Noida, Dadri and Jewar in Gautam Buddh Nagar district emerged victorious from their respective seats in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections 2022, according to official results.
Pankaj Singh won the Noida seat by a whopping margin of 1.81 lakh votes, according to official results. Pankaj Singh got 2.44 lakh (or 70.16 per cent) of the total votes cast as he crushed the nearest rival Sunil Choudhary of Samajwadi Party, who polled in 62,806 (or 18.04 per cent) votes, the Election Commission website showed. Singh, BJP's UP vice president and son of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, had got 1.62 lakh (or 64.29 per cent) of the total votes polled.
In Dadri, Tejpal Nagar retained his seat by bagging 2.18 lakh (or 61.64 per cent) votes. SP's Rajkumar Bhati was the next in line with 79,850 (or 22.57 per cent) of votes. The victory margin stood at 1.38 lakh, the EC showed. In 2017 polls, Nagar had got 1.41 lakh (or 53.57 per cent) of the total votes.
In Jewar, Dhirendra Singh got 1.17 lakh (50.53 per cent) votes as he registered his second straight assembly win over nearest rival Avtar Singh Bhadana of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, who polled in 60,890 (or 26.25 per cent) votes. The victory margin was 56,315 votes, according to the result on the EC website.cIn 2017, Dhirendra Singh had got 1.02 lakh (or 49.01 per cent) of the total votes polled.
All five MLAs of BJP win from Ghaziabad
Meanwhile in Ghaziabad, all five BJP MLAs, including minister Atul Garg, retained their seats, even as Sunil Kumar Sharma, contesting from Sahibabad constituency, won with a record 2.14 lakh vote margin, poll results showed.
Sharma got 3.22 lakh (or 67.03 per cent) of the total votes counted, defeating his nearest rival Amarpal Sharma of the Samajwadi Party who polled 1.08 lakh votes, the Election Commission website showed. In 2017, Sharma was the biggest winner in terms of vote margin. His victory margin was over 1.50 lakh then.
Atul Garg, a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government, retained his Ghaziabad seat with a victory margin of 1.05 lakh votes over nearest rival SP's Vishal Verma. Garg got 1.50 lakh (or 61.37 per cent) of total votes counted, while Verma bagged 44,668 (or 18.25 per cent) votes, EC data showed.
In Loni, BJP's controversial MLA Nandkishor Gurjar won in a close contest with RLD's Madan Bhaiya, a former MLA and influential leader of the Gurjar community. Nandkishor won with a margin of 8,676 votes.
In Muradnagar seat, Ajit Pal Tyagi emerged victorious once again as he crushed the nearest rival RLD's Surendra Kumar Munni by 97,095 votes.
In Modinagar, Manju Siwach continued her winning streak. She got 34,619 more votes against nearest rival RLD's Sudesh Sharma.
BJP and Adityanath break the 'Noida jinx'
With BJP securing a comfortable win in Uttar Pradesh, for the second consecutive time, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday seems to have successfully busted what was dubbed as the "Noida Jinx".
Adityanath also looked set for a victory from Gorakhpur Urban seat while all three BJP candidates in Gautam Buddh Nagar district secured a win.
A myth was nurtured for nearly three decades that any chief minister of Uttar Pradesh who visited Noida in Gautam Buddh Nagar district was doomed to go out of power.
In recent history, Mayawati, who took oath as the UP CM in March 2007, had visited Noida in November that year to attend the wedding of close aide Satish Mishra's relative. However, the BSP supremo's bold move, which was seen as a myth-buster at the time, was followed by her ouster from power from the state in 2012. Mayawati hails from Badalpur village in Greater Noida.
Her predecessors Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, BJP's Rajnath Singh and Kalyan Singh had also avoided visiting Noida during their chief ministership. Mulayam's son Akhilesh Yadav, who became the CM in 2012, had continued the trend of avoiding in-person visit to Noida, often dubbed as the show window to Uttar Pradesh.
In 2013, former UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav did not attend the Asian Development Bank Summit organised in Noida, when the then prime minister Manmohan Singh was the chief guest.
The "Noida jinx" took root after chief minister Veer Bahadur Singh had to step down in June 1988, a few days after he returned from Noida.
Yogi Adityanath, who had stormed to power in UP in 2017, has visited Noida nearly a dozen times since becoming the UP chief minister and launched the Noida Metro, among other development projects in the region over the years. In January this year, Adityanath visited Gautam Buddh Nagar to review the COVID-19 pandemic situation and hit out at Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav and said coming here becomes important for him as the chief ministers who preceded him always hesitated about visiting the district.
"They were afraid. Their own life and political power were the only things important for them. But they had no agenda for economic prosperity, health and well-being of the people of the state and hence they were hesitant about visiting Gautam Buddh Nagar," Adityanath had said.
